Clochans are small stone structures built using corbelling, a method in which each course of stones projects slightly inward over the one below until the walls meet at the top, forming a dry-stone beehive shape held together by nothing but gravity and precise placement. They are associated with early Christian monasticism in Ireland, where solitary monks used them as cells, but they also appear in secular farming contexts, and distinguishing one use from the other is rarely straightforward.

At Gleann Fán, the archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister recorded the remains of three clochans in the area in 1899, noting them in his survey work of that period. Three structures in proximity suggests something more than a lone hermit's retreat, though whether this grouping points to a small monastic cluster or a working settlement is not something the surviving evidence resolves. The valley sits within the Corca Dhuibhne landscape of the western Dingle Peninsula, one of the most densely layered archaeological zones in Ireland, where early medieval remains appear alongside prehistoric field systems and ringforts with some regularity.